in the ‘pets vs cattle’ analogy, it totally makes sense that even with cattle, occasionally you bring one in for a checkup by a vet to see if you can detect any

in the ‘pets vs cattle’ analogy, it totally makes sense that even with cattle, occasionally you bring one in for a checkup by a vet to see if you can detect any problems that might affect the herd. Ssh into a production box to check everything is working as expected and take some readings. Sure. On the other hand, I tend to lean more towards a ‘wild animals’ model, where, sure, you can tranquilize one and bring it in to look over, but once it’s got the smell of humans on it, it’s doomed if you let it back out in the wild again. Once you ssh into a production box, it is forever tainted. Sure, poke around in it, install some perf tools to run some diagnostics, learn what you can about its behavior. But then, rather than putting it back into the wild to serve traffic, out of mercy, you should destroy it and replace it with a clean instance.